FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT FUNDING - PAGE 3

When Unionville High School science teacher Helen Martin needed money for a radio scanner to help track satellite frequencies for the school's weather satellite tracking station, she knew where to go. When her colleague, English teacher Kathleen Kapp, needed software for the high school's writing center, she also knew who could help. Both teachers, like many of their colleagues, have discovered that when they need additional money for creative classroom projects, they have a friend at the Chester County Educational Foundation, a nine-year-old nonprofit agency.

Philadelphia could be forced to eliminate at least $50 million in spending on youth programs because of a change in state funding patterns, city officials said yesterday. Most of the imperiled programs are part of the city Department of Human Services' Division of Community-Based Prevention Services. They include after-school initiatives, truancy programs, and some programs of the nonprofit Philadelphia Safe and Sound. "This really could be devastating," said Cheryl Ransom-Garner, commissioner of the Department of Human Services.

With family ties to Camden dating back six generations, Jonathan Latko was determined to rebuild a corner of his impoverished city by developing 124 apartments on a block along Market Street between the waterfront and downtown. Looking for money during the recession in 2009, Latko and some similarly civic-minded friends turned to Remington Financial Group, a firm that boasted of arranging multimillion-dollar funding for huge projects. Remington demanded - and got - a $12,500 up-front fee to arrange the financing, but it never materialized.

The executive director of a Hispanic community agency in Hudson County charged yesterday that Assembly Speaker Chuck Hardwick's office refused to sponsor state funding for the organization because its board is supporting U.S. Rep. Jim Courter for governor - a charge that Hardwick's campaign emphatically denied. Marita Borzaga, executive director of the Latin American Community Agency in West New York, N.J., said that Hardwick's director of member services, Donna Frangakis, told her on Thursday that Assembly Republicans would not post the legislative bill necessary for the agency's funding.

Gov. Kean rejected a final effort to save a state Labor Department office in Camden yesterday by vetoing a $1.2 million spending proposal that would have kept the office open. In rejecting the appropriation, Kean said the money would not address the long-term funding problem of keeping the office open. The office makes Social Security disability determinations for the federal government. Kean's action was expected. The Labor Department closed the Camden office June 30 and transferred its operations to another disability determinations office in Newark.

Mayor Street joined in a boisterous protest outside City Hall yesterday in the hope of pushing Gov. Rendell to fix a funding gap that has imperiled programs for 23,300 city children. The rally came a day before the two men were set to meet about the gap, and as the city's commissioner of human services was spending a second consecutive day in Harrisburg working on the issue. "A message has to be sent to anybody that has anything to do with the budget of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," Street told a crowd of about 300. "Our children deserve better.

The City of Philadelphia has sued the state of Pennsylvania to free funds for child care. Supporting this action, I am nonetheless concerned that Philadelphia's children may suffer while this suit works its way through the legal system. We must not allow an argument over funding responsibility to jeopardize funding. The children's needs remain immediate. Furthermore, properly funded and staffed services can do work to protect children in need. For example, my social work agency, Episcopal Community Services (ECS)

Efforts to restore the historic Black Horse Inn and improve a section of Bethlehem Pike in Springfield Township are getting underway in earnest. It will be announced today that $150,000 in federal funds has been appropriated to restore the 18th-century inn, and $800,000 more in federal funding has been allocated to spruce up a section of Bethlehem Pike where the inn is located, according to figures provided by an aide to U.S. Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz, (D., Pa.). The staffer said the $150,000 grant will have to be matched by local fund-raising efforts, from the public, corporations, foundations and government bodies at the township, state and federal level.

Saying the state Department of Education has badly shortchanged Gloucester City schools, officials from the district began arguing a case for increased funding before a judge here yesterday. "It would be a farce if it wasn't a tragedy for the kids and parents of Gloucester City," lawyer Richard Shapiro told Judge Bruce R. Campbell in his administrative-law offices. As one of the 33 special-needs or Abbott school districts, so named for the landmark Abbott v. Burke school-funding decision, Gloucester City receives most of its funding from the state.

Congress returned early this month to put the finishing touches on a historic spending bill that reflects the promise of conservative Republicans to pare down government. Although final details of the 1996 budget are unresolved, few federal programs have been spared. Even science and technology initiatives - long a bipartisan favorite in Washington - face the budget ax under current GOP proposals. The House has slashed funding for a variety of research and development programs that have burgeoned in recent years.